


Are You Still Mine?

by Coldest_Fire



Series: Found, But Make it Gay [1]
Category: House of Night - P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast
Genre: About the monstress and about her feelings, Also they're already lovers they did that in scotland, Canon Rewrite, F/F, I will rewrite Found, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Learning to trust, Love Confessions, Lynette from our verse is dead after all, Neferet and Lynette both have trust issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other Neferet is in denial, but make it gay, imprint fic, it started as a plan for something sexy and then was a character study, might be sex in chapter 2 we'll see???, so many feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:34:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28413963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coldest_Fire/pseuds/Coldest_Fire
Summary: A rewrite of the imprint scene, in which Neferet finds out she killed Lynette in this universe, and decides that she will protect her with her life. It takes a lot of trust to let someone in her head.“There is one way to ensure I cannot be separated from you, I can feel all you feel, and she will not be able to drink of you,” she paused, knowing Lynette was waiting, but having to battle the sense of claustrophobia she got, thinking of having another inside her mind. This was inconceivable. Lynette would know parts of her she’d hidden, but what worse was there to know than what she’d already been told? She would feel her, but she knew so much about what Neferet already felt that little of it was secret. It was completely inconceivable. She’d killed a warrior for coming close to this kind of bond. “I told you I would die before I let her hurt you. There’s a way for me to act on it. Do you know what it is to imprint with a vampyre?” She asked
Relationships: Neferet (House of Night)/Lynette Witherspoon
Series: Found, But Make it Gay [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2081076
Kudos: 1





	Are You Still Mine?

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in October. I intended to write pwp about the imprint. Lynette specifically thinks about what else they could be doing. That might happen, but also with her backstory I don't know if she would, so we're going to see how the next chapter goes. 
> 
> Yet another case of pwp becomes a non-explicit character study. My vice is resolving the emotional tension between these two. 
> 
> Also, I think the canon scene didn't address how out of the ordinary it is for Neferet to be willing to do this. In her backstory form Revealed, she straight up got her warrior killed for trying to have a bond anything like this. So I wanted both more reaction to the news article about Lynette dying, and more reaction to choosing to imprint, and, because I'm not a coward, it's all very gay.

“She killed her. This world’s Neferet killed her.”

“Keep reading,” Lynette said, her voice hollow. “It gets worse.”

Neferet was reeling. The words had burned into her mind. Had she been human, she might have thrown up, but instead, she did what she did best: she tried to take control of the situation. Perhaps the goddess version of herself was not like her. Perhaps she forgot what she was. Perhaps she was the type that would have given Lynette to Oak, as her future. Maybe that version of her was _wrong_. But that didn’t mean she’d become her, and it certainly didn’t mean, goddess or not, that she’d let her take Lynette from her.

It _almost_ scared her, thinking that suddenly, anything could become so important it was worth throwing away everything she’d fought for. It would have scared her more, had she not been standing there, speechless, staring at a photograph of Lynette’s body, bloodless, slumped in an ersatz throne. She hadn’t felt this in a long time, the kind of disgust, and fear and _sadness_. This world held no Lynette. She’d done that.

Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe someone else drained her, and that was where this all started. She’d certainly lose her mind if her Lynette had died so horribly before her.

It couldn’t have been. No one else could get in. She felt somehow filthy. Her Lynette’s blood was not on her hands. Wanting to free the other, perhaps made her some flavour of complicit.

She didn’t realize she’d dropped the papers until she heard the rustle of Lynette picking them up.

“She could have left,” Lynette continued, her voice just as wooden, “She stayed with her Neferet. And she killed her.”

Lynette stayed voluntarily, to worship Neferet as a goddess, and this was what she gave her in return. Lynette had escaped, only to return to her doom. Neferet’s trembling hand found the stem of her wine glass, and she threw it down in a long gulp. She then walked to the liquor cabinet, and selected something she’d lost her taste for long before. Brandy smelled like Chicago. If she was to drink it, she would not smell it. She opened the bottle and, crass through it was, took a long swig. Her tongue was numb. She didn’t taste it, nor feel it, even as she repeated the gesture a couple more times, then stabilized herself against the door, to an aghast Lynette. She removed another bottle, this one something she could tolerate the smell of, and poured it into the first glass she could find—a wine glass of whiskey— and offered it to Lynette.

Lynette accepted it wordlessly. Neferet wondered if she was afraid to touch her now. Did the bottle of brandy look like her neck?

Lynette shot back the whole glass on one go, coughing a bit from the burn in her throat. “How long have you known?” Neferet asked.

Lynette looked out the window instead of at her, “Midday. I- you hate doors, which I know. And you don’t like it when things wake you.” Her voice still betrayed nothing but the tightness in her throat. She was going to cry. Neferet couldn’t hold her without hurting her. She’d held all this in so long because she knew of Neferet’s baggage. Was that fear or love?

She stared at her a long moment, trying to comprehend who she was seeing. Her eyes took her in, memorized her hair, and the lines of her sweater, which looked soft. She tried to understand who Lynette could even be. She felt impossible. Her handmaid. The only living person who knew about her past. The woman who stood by her above all others, and left everything behind to stay with her. Her hands ached, acutely empty. She could not understand what she was seeing. “Dearest…” she started, “Lynette, look at me,” she implored, “you know me, and you know my aversions. I wish you hadn’t let that stop you. I hate seeing you so upset,” she acknowledged, realizing how much it affected her. This left her powerless. She could not use her children to free Lynette of her anguish.

When Lynette faced her, Neferet took her hands, looking into her eyes, imploring her to hear her. “This changes things,” she admitted. What changed, that she was trying to work out. Did her desires change? Did her ability to part with her, or protect her?

Something had to be different.

Lynette cast her eyes downward, and asked plaintively, “can we go home?”

_We._ In a moment of relief, Neferet wanted to accept that, go to Skye, and try again. She knew what that world held for them. She could not return to it, unless as enough of a goddess that she could ensure their safety. “Almost,” she assured her, “we can’t return—not until I have the power to protect us. She’s our—she’s _my_ only option.” She left that open to her, to walk away if she needed. She didn’t think she could stand it. “She’s… she’s me, and she’s our best chance. She can’t be the monster that she seems, there has to be a misunderstanding—I can’t leave her down there to rot—” Neferet had to wonder what was so broken in the goddess version of herself that she’d been able to kill her. Perhaps it was a sacrifice, like wee Denise, and the throne was a gesture of veneration, and not mockery. She had to believe she didn’t have that in her.

_“I’m_ rotting,” Lynette insisted, tears spilling down her cheeks. Neferet squeezed her hands. She regretted what she’d said immediately. She couldn’t think of the Neferet in the ground as herself. She needed space.

“I—Lynette, I don’t know how any version of me could do such a thing. I have to think you were her Denise, and offered yourself to her, believing in her as Denise did. I can’t understand, and I don’t want to understand what she thought could be worth your sacrifice,” she trailed off. She knew that wasn’t how the article read. She just wanted to understand, and a sacrifice was the only way she could fathom it. “I can’t stand to think that I—some version of me—didn’t _need_ you like I do.”

It was the wrong word, though the same number of letters. It was an easier word, despite the vulnerability implied in it. She hated to need anything not contained within herself, but she didn’t hate this.

“If you release her, I will die,” Lynette said, with all the confidence of a prophetess.

Neferet’s grip on her hands turned to steel, and she shook her head violently enough to dislodge the thought, as though it was climbing the back of her head like some kind of parasite. “She won’t go near you,” she said, with the same certainty, “I would die before I’d let her.” Her voice turned cold, lost the emotion, and the plea. Some thoughts could not be abided. Some fears were to remain unspoken.

“She’s a _goddess_ ,” Lynette insisted, her breath catching in her chest, and coming out a shuddered sob. Neferet pulled her into her chest instinctively, feeling a visceral relief at the warmth of her body, the feeling of her arms around her lover’s back. She felt as though she was already shielding her in some way. As though she could protect Lynette with her body.

There was a way she could. Neferet took a long, slow breath, and then asked, “my dearest, do you trust me?” Hearing the words aloud, she amended it, to avoid forcing her hand. “After what you’ve read, I understand if you have trepidation. I understand if you’re afraid. I understand if part of what you’re afraid of is me.” Which hurt to say, but she had to ensure Lynette was safe to be honest.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she whispered, “you aren’t the same.”

Neferet could not conceal the sighed relief that felt like the warmth of Lynette’s body, but from the inside. She had that effect. “I am powerful. There’s the old magic, my children, and my own power, and she is a mad, starved, entombed goddess. I am not a goddess, but I expect, until she feeds, I am more powerful than her.” When she felt Lynette nod against her chest, she took another breath, before saying what she’d been afraid to.

“There is one way to ensure I cannot be separated from you, I can feel all you feel, and she will not be able to drink of you,” she paused, knowing Lynette was waiting, but having to battle the sense of claustrophobia she got, thinking of having another inside her mind. This was inconceivable. Lynette would know parts of her she’d hidden, but what worse was there to know than what she’d already been told? She would feel her, but she knew so much about what Neferet already felt that little of it was secret. It was completely inconceivable. She’d killed a warrior for coming close to this kind of bond. “I told you I would die before I let her hurt you. There’s a way for me to act on it. Do you know what it is to imprint with a vampyre?” She asked, her voice getting almost breathless.

Lynette did not look at her, but she felt her lips move, trying to form words before finally, she filled in, “it’s a bond between a vampyre and their lover.” Neferet was relieved, again, that she did not choose a slightly more fitting four-letter word. She wasn’t ready to say it or think it just yet. It was enough of a sign that she was doing this.

“It’s like no other bond,” Neferet continued, “it allows them to speak without words, to find each other anywhere they are, and it is contingent on an emotional intimacy between the two to form,” and she didn’t say that Lynette was the only person she’d ever had that with, “and it deepens that intimacy, so much so that you feel as one. That will not always be pleasant, with me,” she warned, “I can dull a lot of it for you, to spare you of it, but-” but sometimes, the things she felt weren’t things she’d ever wish on her lover. The fear, the hurt, the loneliness. It was hers alone, and it was not right that Lynette should bear it.

“What’s most important of it is that your blood becomes unpalatable to all other vampyres. They can sense that it would never willingly be theirs—that you belong to me, completely. Her bloodlust would be thwarted, and any other vampyre who intended you harm would know that they’d have to go through me to reach you. You would be mine,” she assured her.

It scared her that she _wanted_ it. This wasn’t an emergency measure any longer, nor an evil for her to brave. This wasn’t a step to becoming powerful, nor to her fate as a goddess. This was something she wanted, for no reason but Lynette. But what she felt. She wanted Lynette to be hers, in a way that blurred the line between lover, consort and the warrior’s oath of protection. She was a militant lover, and one who would protect Lynette with the same zeal as she protected herself all these years.

She felt tears through her dress. And her fingers ran through Lynette’s hair. “I give you my oath that I will protect you to my last breath.” Her throat closed. So many admissions. So many words. Her own eyes began to prickle, and vision blurred.

“You’d be alright with me feeling you, if you can’t turn it off?” She asked.

Neferet had thought about that a lot. To be known was a kind of destruction she’d feared all her life. “I’ve never allowed anyone to feel me. I had a warrior who died trying. I couldn’t imagine wanting someone to know, let alone feel as I felt. Someone I could not escape. I’d have considered death before this at a time. I know what it is I’m offering you,” she insisted, before her voice dropped to barely a whisper, “and now, I want it. I want you to be mine.” She wanted to so much that losing her was more terrifying than letting her in.

Lynette was still a long moment, before she nodded. “I trust you, Neferet,” she whispered. Somehow, it was so much more intimate than another word would have been. Neferet hadn’t heard her says her name in a long time. It sounded beautiful. “I trusted you enough to come here. I believed in you enough to give up everything before I’d even left. Are you sure you want me?” She asked, “my fear, and hesitations, and everything else I feel. Am I too human not to hold you back from godhood?”

Neferet pulled back, so she could look her in the eyes, not caring that Lynette could see the tears in hers. “I want your fear. I want your hesitation, just as much as I want your pleasure, your joy and your trust. I want you, Lynette, if you’ll let me in.” She knew Lynette’s past. Knew she’d been hurt by those supposed to protect her, so many times over. Knew some of her fear was larger than this. Some of it was the kind that barricaded doors and surpassed a century of distance. She knew the people who’d done all this to her lover were alive somewhere. She didn’t have the closure Neferet had gotten. Perhaps, being hers would even help her to know they’d never again touch her.

“Please,” was all Lynette got out before she was in Neferet’s arms once more.


End file.
